


one day i'll give you my heart (when it's not in two)

by herwhiteknight



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, F/F, Tumblr Prompt, Unconventional Format
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21591073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herwhiteknight/pseuds/herwhiteknight
Summary: Blake leaves and Yang tries to recover.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 2
Kudos: 56





	one day i'll give you my heart (when it's not in two)

**Author's Note:**

> someone on tumblr asked for me to write something based off of the prompt: “What if I don’t get better? What if I am broken?”
> 
> played around with formatting and capitalization n all that good stuff again for this one. hope you enjoy!

“what if i dont get better.”

they’re the first words that yang had spoken aloud since she’d woken up in that bed. the first words after she raged and screamed and cried, that is. 

her father stops in the doorway, turns. sets down a tray and. _oh,_ she can see that look. it’s exactly the look she never wanted to see directed at her, to be aware of, but. she’s tired of staring out the window and watching the moon and wishing it would break a little more. 

_you’re not like me. not nearly broken enough. not yet._

“Oh, sweetie,” her father says, and _gods_ she knows he means well. of course he does. they all do. and she hates them for it. 

( _she hates_ her _the most though_ )  
( _no she doesn’t. but she does_ )

“You’ll get better! You’re already healing remarkably well - you’ve always had a strong aura. You take after your mother that way,” taiyang encouraged, and she wanted to scream at him some more. but what energy did she have left after the self-loathing?

“the mother who abandoned us, you mean?” she snaps bitterly, and it’s enough. tai picks up the dinner tray that yang hadn’t touched, and walks out of her room without a word. there’s a satisfying slump to his shoulders that yang wants to take pride in - and does.

and feels awful for doing so.

  
  
  


she eats, eventually. drinks some water. gets out of bed.

eventually.

it doesn’t matter.

  
  
  


blake doesn’t come back.

  
  
  
  


her father means well, tries his best to help her _get back on her feet._ not like he could really understand. he just thinks she lost her arm. but she’s alive without it, and still feels so empty. if only she could slip back into a life where blake settled against her side as easily as the new atlas arm fit against her residual limb.

if only blake hadn’t felt like she fit so easily into her life in the first place, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much to go without her. to have been left by her. to be ruined by her. 

so she puts the arm on, as easily - _no, still so difficult_ \- as she slips on her atlas arm, slips into sparring and dodging and pretending she has a smile that stays on for the whole day. it works, and her father thinks she’s okay. 

somehow, somedays, yang thinks the same of herself.

  
  


( _but she knows she’s lying_ )

  
  


so she doesn’t get better, but she moves on, and well, that’s a step to healing, isn’t it?   
(it is, but. yang doesn’t see it that way.)

She throws herself into her personal mission ~~finding blake~~ getting back to Ruby. And it’s easy, at first. She has her motorcycle, an air of freedom, and her hair whipping behind her underneath her helmet. It’s all for her to take, to conquer as her own - alone.

and so she slips. again. she’s anger and rage and caged demons and they wrestle her into tears the night after she confronts her mom. she wants to yell at raven, to punch her lights out. _you left and she did too and you were supposed to come back, but you didn’t! and neither will she!_

“You don’t love me,” Yang had said, in a moment of clarity as she pulled Weiss onto the back of her motorcycle. Bumblebee. Blake had said once - _blake -_ she’d wanted yang to give her a ride somewhere on it.

_“Anywhere._ ”

and she slips again, guns the engine and tears off, leaving a dust plume in her wake.

  
  


She doesn’t falter again until they’re all reunited under the same roof. Yang doesn’t think about the fact that _all_ of them isn’t everyone, because she’s wrestling Nora with her new arm and she’s laughing and Weiss is rolling her eyes at her sister’s antics and she sees a gleam of affection tossed across the table and thinks - _oh, someone’s captured the Ice Queen’s heart._ But she doesn’t think too hard on that, because if she thinks too hard she’ll think about how someone had captured her own, how maybe, if she hoped hard enough, that she’d captured her heart in return -

but she doesn’t think. that path is too -

She’s happy here with her friends. She’s not missing anyone. No. She convinces herself well enough, and no one thinks to ask. Either that, or they can see the heavy clouds around Yang’s shoulders that she’s trying desperately to pretend that she’s not being soaked by.

Taiyang didn’t understand - he thought her weight was just physical. That she mourned her fighting style taking a loss, that she would never feel again -

but that was wrong. that was the whole problem, the _feeling._ she never _wanted_ to feel again.

Ruby and Weiss… they understood better. 

“I just wish Blake was here,” and there it was. Said. Spoken. Right out loud. That name she tried not to ever think. That name she hoped to never hear. The name she wanted to speak so badly. As a greeting. A return. A “you came back.

_“to me”_

_She left us. She left me. she_ “-made her choice.”

“i dont know. and i don’t care.”

  
  


“bad things just happen ruby.”

“calm down!”

  
  
  


“ _don’t tell me to calm down!!_ ”

“she tore our team apart! how am i supposed to forgive her for that? she tore _me_ apart,” yang snarls, gears whirring and clicking as she makes a fist, then forgoes gestures altogether and lets her arm fall from her socket like a broken ragdoll. cut puppet strings.

“Blake didn’t-”

“no. _blake_ didn’t,” she acknowledges, and she feels molten fall from her eyes. “ _blake_ did nothing. blake didn’t do this,” yang gestures to the arm. “but she tore me apart all the same.”

  
  


“you wouldn’t understand.”

“what if i stay like this? i _won't_ get better. not without…. not without _her._ and if she doesn’t come back….. what if i stay broken?”


End file.
